How Do You Build a Relationship Based on Mutual Trust and Respect With Your Dog?

I’ve been openly critical of Dog Training and Dog Behaviourists in my writing of late, which is all well and good, but I am aware that presenting a positive vision of what to do instead is not something I have written or spoken about much. So this article seeks to address that a little.

By now it shouldn’t be a secret that the key to living harmoniously with your dog is to have a relationship based on mutual trust and respect. That is a mantra I repeat over and over again, because it is true. In the various places I interact with people asking for help with their dog, I keep coming up against people not knowing how to build such a relationship with their dog and that is a problem.

So how do you build a relationship based on mutual trust and respect with your dog?

It sounds ephemeral and nebulous at times, and perhaps it is, but that is a necessary condition when you realise that relationships are governed by chemical signals in the brain; dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. I’m not going to deep dive into any of that science, except to say this: we’re back into the limbic system of the brain, predominately, and the limbic system has no capacity for language, but it is excellent at “feelings” via reward circuits sensitive to the aforementioned hormones. So when talking about a “how to” article that revolves around working with a brain system that doesn’t do language, only feelings, it tends to get ephemeral and nebulous on occasion.

Here is my short pithy statement on how to build a relationship based on mutual trust and respect: Do almost exactly as you would do with human friends. Show them the real you. Share activities, find things they like doing, meet their exercise needs, spend time together just relaxing, meet their basic survival needs, value their concerns, allow them to express themselves, give them choices to make, ask for permission.

It’s worth remembering that trust and respect are earned. So too are mistrust and disrespect.

Evidently I am going to expand on the above statements, so how do you do relationship building practically?

It’s about giving the animal space and the opportunity to make decisions and follow you because it wants to, because it trusts you and wants to be with you. It starts with offering trust and respect.

The idea is to become the most important thing in the dog’s life, by being the sort of person that warrants the dog voluntarily making that decision. It does have to be voluntary, you can’t force the dog to like you, though evidently some breeds have a higher natural predisposition towards this, I’m looking at you Golden Retrievers……

Things work best with your dog when it’s a partnership, so make it one. How? Think about what you are asking or telling the dog to do. Does it have no choice where a choice could be offered? Try giving the dog the opportunity to self-manage its behaviours rather than ordering and commanding it around all the time, you’ll be surprised how quickly they work out the rules when it’s to their benefit. An example; when its walk time, get the stuff and go and stand by the door and wait for your dog to come and join you and sit down calmly before putting the collar and leash on. No need to say a word. It might take a while for your dog to work it out, but you are offering the dog a choice, to go out with you or not. Great if they want to come with you, but there are conditions that must be met before that collar goes on. We need calm. That is imposing a requirement for the dog to self-manage its behaviour. That’s killing two birds with one stone.

If your dog doesn’t want to come with you, that’s also ok. You now have a choice, put all the stuff away and do something else, or, go out for a walk by yourself. Either way, your dog will realise that it has a choice, it has agency over what happens to it. That is you offering the dog respect. Not only that, the consequences of that decision by the dog remain until the next walk opportunity. The dog will remember that it missed out on a walk. Now I’m sure we all know very lazy dogs that occasionally need a bit of encouragement to actually get up and do stuff, English Bulldogs anyone? And yes on the odd occasion, a bit of a push might be necessary, but it ought to be a very rare exception.

Lets progress as if we are out on a walk, to be clear, this works in pretty much any day to day common scenario you go through with your dog from grooming and nail trimming and feeding, the whole lot.

When you are out with your dog, are you allowing the dog to tell you it wants things? Are you allowing it to have those things? What is the criteria for your dog getting what it wants? Is the default answer “no”? Is there any good reason the answer is no? Put another way, does your dog have the opportunity to communicate with you in such a manner that you can determine what it is that the dog wants, and what is your reaction to your dog asking for something? If those two prior sets of questions make no sense to you, I suspect you have a dog that mostly ignores you, and probably just put its nose down and pulls you along when on a walk, which is a problem, and I know that you know that is a problem.

The best way to clear up that previous paragraph is a real life anecdote, this one is with my dog Rollo. From the day we brought him (and Tora) home, we never used to let Rollo (or Tora for that matter) meet dogs when out on walks, unless we had specifically arranged to do so beforehand with the other owner. Why? Because trainers told me that he needed to be able to ignore other dogs when he was with me, or my wife. Rollo, being a Tibetan Mastiff, was even when young, a serious handful whilst I abided by this rule, because he wanted to meet the other dogs we saw. He made this very clear by his slamming into the end of the leash and barking and rearing up on his hind legs like the Ferrari badge horse. It looked and sounded awful. I persevered, but required the use of a slip leash to get Rollo under control. It worked, he could do it. But as soon as the slip leash was off, the old behaviour returned of him desperately trying to meet the other dog – no shock there if you know anything about behaviour and punishment, but that’s a different blog I’ve already written.

So I did something so many of us are told not to. First, the slip leash went in the bin, where it belongs, and then I broke all the rules: I started letting Rollo meet the other dogs – he had to show me some calm first, so I’d wait until he did – no commands from me – Rollo had to work out the rules by himself, and that’s when the magic happened. Rollo learned to meet other dogs calmly, but not only that, on the odd occasion that the answer had to be “no”, Rollo didn’t kick up a fuss, because he knew that for the most part he would get what he wanted, so he started asking me by looking at me, and usually, if he showed calm, the answer was yes. (The picture below is not on a walk, but its a great example of Rollo asking me for something. I am stood over some food that Tora left. Rollo wants it. He doesn’t just take it, he asks me for it. Look at his expression. No doubt you can read it. I said yes to him.)

Rollo asking for food

The crucial part here bears repeating. Due to the conditions I set, putting the onus on Rollo to get calm to meet other dogs, Rollo not only worked this out, he started actively asking me for permission to meet the other dogs, he would do this by looking at the other dog, and then looking me in the eye, often paired with him stopping walking. This is real relationship level communication, no words, just a look and some body language – Rollo asking his human to accommodate something he wants but also telling me what he wants, and accepting my decision, well, that’s easy when it was yes, but he still accepted it when it was no. Pure magic. No force, no commands, no treats, no stress. Mutual trust and respect.

There was zero good reason I didn’t let Rollo meet dogs on walks, I did that because I was told to; “he has to learn to ignore other dogs” No. Wrong. So very very wrong. Following that mantra harmed my relationship with my dog. I disrespected him by putting him in a slip leash and strangled him on walks in an attempt to force him to bend to my will. I still feel horrid writing that, and no doubt you’ve all noticed my tone has darkened this paragraph. My apologies. It’s still raw. Rollo loves meeting dogs, has always loved meeting dogs, and will always love meeting dogs. He is a super social dog, and when I actually took that into account, and started accommodating his wants, and provided him the boundaries within which he could have what he wanted, he not only complied voluntarily, he started asking me for permission without any prompting – we bonded over it. We developed mutual trust and respect.

I earned his trust by giving him the space to tell me what he wanted, and by accommodating those desires when I could with stipulations on him self-managing his behaviours to get what he wanted.

There's give and take in any relationship, and in a true partnership, not only must the dog's needs be met, their wants have to be taken into account too. That doesn’t mean it becomes a chaotic free for all, that’s going too far the other way, rules boundaries and expectations remain.

Modern life is often antithetical to building a relationship based on mutual trust and respect. How many of us go out with our dogs and put no time limit on the activity? Can you honestly say you take your dog for a walk or to the dog park and let the dog decide when it’s done and it’s time to go home? Another one of those “the best thing I ever did” things. At the weekends last summer I started taking Rollo & occasionally Tora out further afield to places, one of which is beautiful seaside town with a dog beach and a long coastal walking path, every Saturday or Sunday hundreds of other dog walkers are there walking and running with their dogs, most of which are off leash. Rollo’s record is 2.5 hours of walking along the coastal path. I did turn us around, but when we got near the car, Rollo told me he wasn’t ready to go yet, so he looked at me, stopped walking and then just lay down on the grass (see pic below) – Rollo just wanted to relax here.

That was fine by me. I’m out with my dog, we are having a great time in the warm sunshine watching people and dogs go by. I was in no rush for it to end, and neither was Rollo. It was another magical moment all because I stepped back and let it be, I gave some control to Rollo and listened to him. He remembers that, and he remembers how he made it clear to me with his body language, which is reinforcing to him that I do understand his requests, and I do accommodate those requests, which makes him feel valued as a partner that has decisions to make.

Obviously we can’t do that all the time, but taking off the shackles of time is a very good way of building the relationship with your dog. I can almost hear the chorus of “but dogs thrive on routine”. Well, yes, they do. But they thrive even more when they feel like they have some say in changes to the routine, or, can throw it out the window altogether because something else is far more fun. Your dog will thank you for taking these sorts of things into account. They are animals, not machines, same as us.

For a genuinely successful partnership with your dog, you don’t need commands, you don’t need treats, and you don’t need tools. What you do need to do is focus on the relationship, make it a true partnership, yes you are the senior partner, act like it when you need to, but treat your dog like they are a partner too. It’ll be the best thing you ever do for them.